Iran Sentences Woman To Two Years Imprisonment For Removing Headscarf

A prosecutor in the Iranian capital Tehran has said that an unnamed woman who removed her obligatory Islamic headscarf in public has been sentenced to 24 months in prison, three months without parole.

Iran’s semi-official Tasnim news agency on Wednesday quoted prosecutor Abbas Jafari Dolatabadi as saying the woman took off her headscarf in Tehran’s Enghelab Street to ‘encourage corruption through the removal of the hijab in public’.

Dolatabadi, who announced the sentence, said the woman intended to appeal against the verdict, the judiciary’s Mizan Online news agency reported.

The woman ‘encouraged moral corruption’ in public, he said, criticising the light nature of the sentence and saying he would push for the full two-year penalty.

More than 30 Iranian women have been arrested since the end of December for publicly removing their veils in defiance of the law.

Most have been released, but many are being prosecuted.

Iranian law in place since the Islamic Revolution of 1979 stipulates that all women, Iranian or foreign, Muslim or non-Muslim, must be fully veiled in public at all times.